ESPN X Games Skateboarding

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As many screens and movies as we could stand to make (not many) of Konami's skateboarder.

By IGN Staff

Media Update [07/26/01] As part of its latest assets disc, Konami of America included a new batch of a dozen high-resolution screenshots of its promising new skateboarding game. For a look at these shots, just head on down to the Media section below to check out ESPN X Games Skateboarding, which is currently due for release in late August.

Previous Information [04/16/01] Sometimes I wonder why publishers even bother attempting to muscle in on the skateboarding genre. Critically, Tony Hawk owns the territory. But economics are also an issue, and it's hard to ignore the fact that Grind Session, universally considered to be inferior to the original Hawk (except by the odd useless waterhead, who shall remain nameless), sold well into the respectable six-figure range. So perhaps it's not such a bad idea at all, especially if you have a strong license to apply to the game. Like, say, the X-Games.

Having seen a very early version of Konami's X-Games Skateboarding today, I don't know if it's going to be a dominant game (that'll wait until we can have a look at Tony Hawk at E3), but the solid technological base of X-Games Snowboarding leaves plenty of time for fine-tuning control and level design, which is obviously what really separates the pros from the also-rans. X-Games needs some work in those areas, but it could certainly shape up into a solid game.

As levels go, X-Games doesn't get off to such a promising beginning. The game's nine levels are organized in three tiers: three X-Games competition levels, three expansive street-skating levels, and three "fantasy" levels, bizarre settings that each present their own unusual challenges and lines. The comp levels, unfortunately, look like they'll be the weakest of the lot -- not by any fault of the developers, but simply because those particular slices of reality don't translate too well to a fun game level.

Tony Hawk has used a couple of real-life settings, but they were big ones. Skatestreet is a huge park, and thus it worked great in Tony Hawk 2, because it offered you plenty of elbow room and the developers plenty of opportunities to work in lines and transfers. The X-Games street and vert courses (two of the first three levels), in contrast, aren't nearly as big, and thus aren't nearly as fun. The street course is good-sized, but it still doesn't have that many interesting lines programmed into it, and the vert level is simply a giant halfpipe, which is a fairly monotonous exercise in a skateboarding game.

The practice park is pretty good, though, with some rafters to grind and good graffiti textures all round. After that, furthermore, you move forward into the street levels, where the game shows much more promise. The one course we got to see, San Francisco (New York and Los Angeles will eventually join it), is big enough to get lost in, at least a few square blocks of hillside streets with buildings to go inside. There are rails and kicker ramps out in the streets, which will eventually be populated with pedestrians, cars, and the ubiquitous SF streetcars, all the better to crush the inattentive skater. There's plenty of space out in the streets, but indoor areas expand the level's possibilities even more -- there's a bowl in a church surrounded by stained-glass windows, and a tennis court with quarterpipes everywhere and grindable nets.

Beyond that lie the fantasy levels, which we saw very little of, and it's unfortunate that what we did see gave me such bad flashbacks to MTV Sports Skateboarding. The beginning of the Ruins level combines expansive pits with a network of mine-car rails that you have to skate along to traverse them -- the exacting grinding and maneuvering required is an unpleasant reminder of the silly spaghetti-tangle rails in MTV's Seaworld levels and so forth. Looking at the things-which-are-not-screenshots, though, it seems like there is (or will be) much more to that and the other fantasy levels -- the open sections of the Ruins looks like it'll have plenty of grinding room and lines to pick out. The same goes for the...Passenger Liner level, is what they're calling it presently (although it'll probably remind you of a more particular name), where you'll be able to skate the entire deck and down into the engine room and other compartments, and the proposed natural-history museum, featuring grindable dinosaur skeletons.

And yes, in case you're wondering, those things down at the bottom there are not screenshots, although they're closer to such than some of the stuff we've gotten regarding ESPN-licensed games. The structure of the environments and the character models are about right -- just envision those with textures that aren't quite so smooth (texture details is low so far, although most of that aspect of the graphics has yet to be implemented) and lighting that isn't quite so...rendered, I guess. There's draw-in, especially when you look down the streets in SF, but the animation is on a good track so far. It's not stiff like MTV or loose and gelid like Grind Session, at least that's how it seems from what tricks have been implemented, and there are a few touches like fluttering clothes (which, incidentally, gives away the engine's kinship to X-Games Snowboarding). The camera has a good position to show off the tricks, too, particularly some unusual shifts when you grind a lip near the edge of the level. It pulls down level with the skater, a little ways back, and towards the inside of the course -- seems strange, but it actually gives you a bit of a better perspective on the terrain you have to drop back into.

What special effects there are so far are mainly just touches. Sparks fly from grinding trucks, and there's a sort of stop-motion blur applied to a flipping board, which actually looks niftier than it sounds. It's not particularly obtrusive, it just shows off the board animation with a little more flair. That's actually an unusual high point of the animation, the way the board behaves. It still fades into the ether after bails, but it's animated quite well. The skaters throw their boards realistically, and they bounce just right, although breaking boards apparently remain off in the future.

The list of those elite board-throwers includes some notable names, and in particular it explains what happened to Bob Burnquist, whose mysterious disappearance from Tony Hawk 3 produced some confusion on our end (now it only remains to find out what happened to Kareem Campbell). All of the following, we are told, will be accompanied by the licenses of their respective sponsors (with 64 licensed decks all told), as well as plenty of other famous logos. At any rate, the skaters are:

Bob Burnquist - The Firm

Carlos DeAndrade - World Industries

Chad Fernandez - World Industries

Kerry Getz - Habitat

Rick McCrank - Girl

Colin McKay - Girl

Chris Senn - Adrenalin

Lincoln Ueda - New Deal

The real skaters, we're told, will be joined by a few more...unusual characters, to be locked away until players dig them out. Two riders can play multiplayer score attack in split-screen mode.

At E3, we'll likely see a more complete build of X-Games, not to mention the fact that we'll get to actually play it -- and, of course, it'll go head-to-head with Tony Hawk 3, which will be very interesting indeed. The hard strike against X-Games in its current state is that it doesn't bring anything exceptionally new to the table as far as gameplay is concerned. It's got a decent variety of tricks, especially the flatland tricks Tony Hawk 2 brought to the table, and there are some good ideas promising to go into the level design later on, but it'll need proven originality backed up by strong execution of Konami wants to field a contender. We'll see soon enough.

-- David Smith

First Information While it hasn't quite made the same impact as Electronic Arts' new EA Sports Big label, Konami's new ESPN The Games brand has had a very solid run on PlayStation 2 with a string of above average or better titles such as ESPN Winter X Games Snowboarding, ESPN International Track & Field, and the recently released ESPN NBA 2Night. The company hopes to continue strengthening the brand throughout this year as it plans on bringing out new games in just about every major genre around, including the ever-popular Tony Hawk genre that some people like to call skateboarding.

Konami's skateboarding game, which is aptly titled ESPN X Games Skateboarding, is the company's next extreme game for PlayStation 2. It promises to make good use of both the ESPN and X Games license and if Konami's past efforts mean anything, players can expect the game's presentation as good as anything else on the market.

The game includes three different tournament stages that allows the player to grind rails and hit jumps all over a street course or take on the half pipe in recreations from the 2000 X Games in San Francisco. There are also six action stages that take place in a variety of locales including New York and Los Angeles, which permits riders to maneuver around cars, grind on handrails and perform tricks in detailed metropolitan settings.

Plus, for you kids that actually have friends to play games with, X Games Skateboarding has a two-player split screen mode that allows friends (or foes) to go head-to-head and see who's the trick master. And for the suckers that aren't good enough to jump right in and kick some skating ass, there's a deep practice mode that features an interactive tutorial that has the pros give you advice on how to do the different tricks and combinations.

Konami intends to make sure that X Games Skateboarding is one of the most robust skateboarding games around and has ensured that it will include 64 authentic skateboards with different speed and handling attributes. Plus, it will have a crankin' soundtrack featuring more than 11 high-intensity tunes from artists like Linkin Park, New Found Glory, Voodoo Glow Skulls, and more.

ESPN X Games Skateboarding is currently scheduled to ship this August, just in time for the Summer X Games being held in Philadelphia, PA. For a sample of what the game might look like, you can check out the four renders down in the Media section below.

ESPN brings its own brand of extreme sports to the PlayStation 2 with ESPN X GAMES SKATEBOARDING. There are eight real-life pro skaters to choose from each with unique skills and abilities along with 64 licensed decks. The action takes place in Los Angeles, New York, and San Francisco, and you'll be treated to all the sights and sounds of each city as you grind your way to victory. There are nine levels in the game, offering everything from street skating, to X Games competition, to fantasy levels--all that have to be seen to be believed.